March 2008 Meeting &

Plant of the Month Competition

Mini Talks

This month meeting we had two mini talks. The first one was from our vice chair, Mr John Frew and the second one was given by our chairman Mr Sam McNair.

Johns talk was on Stapeliads.
On the specialist website there are 3000 pictures of Stapeliads and it is well worth looking at. We were shown the flowers, they have a corona & a pollinarium. He also showed the seed horns, which some folks get mixed up with the flower bud, then they wonder why the buds do not open! When they do open they have seeds that are like dandelions, I.e. parachutes. They come originally from India but have spread over to Africa, Arabia and Southern Europe. This was a very good talk and excellent slides, a lot coming from Johns own collection.

The second talk by Sam was titled "Flowers", all from Sam's own collection. He spoke about Rebutia and were shown a white flowered example and possibly "Rose of York". He went on to show us flowing examples of Mammillaria, Lobivia, Notocactus, Gymnocalycium, Echinopsis, Epiphyllum, Echinocerus, Aporocactus, Parodia, Neoporteria, Heliocereus, Opuntia and Hildewintera. All the plants shown were in flower. This was another good talk with lots of colourful flowers. It was a most enjoyable evening.